Protecting the power to pollute: Identity co-optation, gender, and the public relations strategies of fossil fuel industries in the United States

Abstract

ABSTRACT The environmental health risks associated with the production and use of fossil fuels have sparked grassroots resistance efforts throughout the world, leading to stricter regulations, lawsuits, defeated pipelines, and bans on hydraulic fracturing and wastewater injection in certain municipalities, states, and nations. Arguably, the hegemony that fossil fuel industries have long maintained is under threat, whereby the pass they have received to externalize environmental and public health costs onto society is increasingly being contested. How have fossil fuel industries responded to these challenges? Through an analysis of the public relations materials of three fossil-fuel-energy front groups in the United States, this study examines fossil fuel industries' efforts to retain cultural hegemony in the face of increasing threats to power and profits. We find that a central strategy of these public-relations campaigns is a process we term ‘Identity Co-optation,’ which entails appropriating and reconstructing the identities of fossil fuel industries' fiercest opponents – concerned women and mothers – in the delivery of their counterclaims. We argue that the strategic mobilization of women in defense of coal, oil, and gas is a clear example of hegemonic powers attempting to appropriate, embody – and ultimately neutralize – threats to their influence and authority.